Sunday, August 31, 2008

Stuck in the Colonial Model



















First, there were slaves working the sugar cane fields and managed with Colbert's little human resource manual. When they were set free and went to hide in what has now become a World Heritage Site workers were imported from India and turned into slaves which, unsurprisingly, eventually led to another inscription on Unesco's list.

Fast forward about 150 years and that model is still very much alive: Mauritian workers in the textile industry have been replaced, but not before being stigmatised as being lazy, by foreign ones in some of the local sweatshops that want profit margins as high as LVMH's. We shouldn't, then, be surprised if 100 years from now we get a new inscription: the textile factory.

9 comments:

SR said...

Who has stepped into Colbert's shoes to hijack the "economic democratisation" dream and feather the Big Business nest? Any clue?

Anonymous said...

Paul, Black Paul & Co

Sanjay Jagatsingh said...

Too many decision-makers here (or should I say rent-seekers) have desperately thought that depreciation is the only way out. That includes MEXA/JEC, Sithanen and Khushiram who even advocated a 'competitive depreciation'. And Berenger does not have an opinion that lasts more than a press conference about this and other fundamental issues.

Anonymous said...

Talking about colonial model, did you watch the news last night?

I saw the Gouverneur de L'ile de France at L'Elysee...

Anonymous said...

Ayo pa facile sa... enn Zom-Pom pe fer Maurice vin enn Dom-Tom

Sanjay Jagatsingh said...

Pa zoli sa? Pa bliye met simiz ki bizin ler al laba.

Sanjay Jagatsingh said...

Pe anvi fer bann travayer angaze versyon 2015 vinn moris?

Ek pu vinn sap sa? Apre ki pu dir skills mismatch?

Anonymous said...

What about the Tourism Industry?

akagugo said...


Same model that applied in the applied in the late 80's textile production to Dodoland: exploit to the maximum a country's poor labour standards until laws become too 'harsh' and then, under the pretense of subcontracting, delocalise to a poor country with inexistent or lax enforcement of labour laws - again, same is being applied to the tourism industry (and then find that the low wages are conducive to widespread theft in rooms, that go mostly unreported and compensated in cash by the hotels' management), and now the construction industry (call the local tradesmen lazy and then import cheapest ones from India or favour Chinese contractors with zero-minute notice period for terminating an employment contract).
Is it a mystery why the minimum wage is taking so much time to be drafted? Let alone employment insurance, portable severance allowance, etc...